Transport stimulation

 

I often take the Tisséo metro from Ramonville St-Agne into the city of Toulouse. Tisséo oversees/manages/owns the majority of the transport methods in Toulouse, and you can use the one travel card on most forms of transport here. Slick and simple.

The metro is clean, regular and completely automated (i.e. there are no drivers), and there are fabulous safety doors on the platforms that are lined up perfectly with the automatically opening train doors. They are also there (I’m sure) to help me feel safe, especially when I am travelling with the children. I am freaked out more than I can say by the metro/underground platforms in Paris and London where, for example, one pushy shovey person, or a trip and a stumble, could see you landing on the tracks and facing an oncoming train.

Onto a lighter note.

There is a great advertisement for Tisséo pasted around Toulouse at the moment. It’s all about the types of people who use Tisséo transport. Here’s the text in English, with the original French version later. I translated it with my 80+ year old French teacher so I’m not exactly sure that some of the phrases are in current parlance! And, it reads:

Tisséo is for:Sunday sportspeople, those who sing in the bathroom, executives who are not always dynamic, people who search for their cats, optimists in all circumstances, elderly people who have a bad back, young people who were out too late, the beautiful and the rebels, bad actors, large families, confirmed bachelors, people with reduced mobility and strong personalities, Instagram photographers[1], spoilt children, old ladies with their cutsie dogs, hypochondriacs, Desperate Housewives but in reality, retirees who are bored, retirees who are also amused, bourgeois hippies[2] who eat organic food, geeks and cool guys, people nostalgic for Dick Rivers’[3] music, fans of Pascal Obispo[4], country dancers, the flankers and the props, people who are passionate about everything, those who like coffee and those who like tea, footballers who receive a yellow card, part-time adventurers, the eternal dreamers, old lady dragons in glasses, crossword lovers, women who fall in love with anyone, those who get up early and those who go to bed late, those who are eternally rushed, those who are systematically late, those who are afraid of the dark, the superstitious…and all of the others. 

In other words, Tisséo is for us all.

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[1] les photographes Instagram = Instagram is an online photo-sharing and social networking service that allows its users to take pictures, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services

[2] bobo = les bourgeois bohèmes/English = bourgeois hippies

[3] Dick Rivers = a rock and roll crooner (as described by my English speaking French hairdresser), and of the same vintage as Eddie Mitchell and Johnny Halliday. He is still popular today in France.

[4] Pascal Obispo = a bit more rock-y than Dick Rivers, and still popular today.

I think that’s great! I like that someone (a committee, a team, a PR firm?) has a great sense of humour and knows that we like to laugh at ourselves.
And now that I know a bit of French, I can appreciate the French version too, so here it is:

Tisséo, c’est pour les : sportifs du dimanche, les chanteurs de salle de bain, les cadres pas toujours dynamiques, ceux qui cherchent leur chat, les optimistes en toutes circonstances, les seniors qui ont mal aux reins, les juniors qui ont mal aux cheveux, les belles et rebelles, les acteurs ratés, les familles nombreuses, les célibataires endurcis, les personnes a mobilité réduite et a la personnalité affirmée, les photographes Instagram, les fils a papa, les toutous a sa mémère, les hypochondriaques, les Desperate Housewives mais en vrai, les retraites qui s’ennuient, ceux qui s’amusent aussi, les bobos qui mangent bio, les geeks et les hipsters, les nostalgiques de Dick Rivers[3], les fans de Pascal Obispo[4], les danseurs de country, les troisièmes lignes et les piliers, les passionnées de n’importe quoi, les accros au café et les buveurs de the, les collectionneurs de cartons jaunes, les aventuriers a temps partiel, les eternels rêveurs, les serpents a lunettes, les cruciverbistes, les amoureuses du premier qui passe, les lève-tôt et les couche-tard, les eternels presses, les systématiquement en retard, ceux qui ont peur du noir, les superstitieux…et tous les autres.

Bref Tisséo, c’est nous tous.